Our friend, Dr. Ross Camidge from the University of Colorado in Denver, provided a bit of personal commentary in the context of his participation in the trial of the combination of afatinib and cetuximab for patients with acquired resistance to EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) therapy, as described by Dr. Pennell in a post a few months ago. Here is a link to a text and also video piece from a Denver news program that describes a bit of his experience and enthusiasm about it, highlighting one beneficiary of the treatment (the news report comes on after the 15 second advertisement) if you click on the video in that link).

Dr. Camidge also provided a map of the US locations where the phase II trial is running (only 4):

(click on image to enlarge)

He also provided a rather inspiring figure showing the before and after images for a patient 28 days into treatment:

I know that there are many people here from outside of the US who are interested in sites outside of the US. The clinicaltrials.gov site lists one in Amsterdam and another in Groningen, Netherlands, but I don't know which actual centers they are.

I'll be happy to provide updates as they become available. In the meantime, others should know that Boehringer-Ingelheim, the makers of afatinib, are developing a much larger phase III trial that will be available in a much larger array of trial centers worldwide, though again targeting patients with an activating EGFR mutation and acquired resistance to an EGFR TKI. I know they were hoping to get this off the ground late this year or early next year, but it can be difficult to project the time line for a new large trial. Again, I'll keep my ear to the ground.